My turn.

There’s a fine line between good timing and bad timing. I suppose it’s all just a matter of perspective.

My dad was just in town for a whole, visiting Stark and I here I Australia. His visit was great. We had a lot of fun. Together, we did many things that Stark and I had never done before either so it felt like vacation all around.

Whenever we have visitors, I naturally take on the role of tour guide, visitor center, and information booth. I do it because I like planning experiences for people that will make lasting memories for them in their life. My travel agent tendencies date back to when I was a child. I would plan all our trips. It didn’t even matter to me if anyone paid any attention to my plans. I simply enjoyed the planning. As a young adult, I was the family dealer and wheeler when it came to booking the best airfare. Now, being a more veteraned tour guide, it’s all about the secret of never planning anything at all, and these last couple of weeks stacked up perfectly. I couldn’t have even ordered better weather, food, or crowds. We really hit the nail on the head.

Everything was going for us. We were living the dream. I was flying high on all of the great habits I had set for myself before he even came, so it was easy for me to stay in routine. I had my meetings in the morning. I went to the gym. I drank my shakes. I lifted my weights. I gave the tour of the day and then I worked again at night. So when things progressively became harder, I shrugged it off as the usual thing I go through with any visitors. Usually it only takes a matter of days before burning the candle at both ends really takes ahold of me, and that was certainly evident in the first couple of days adjusting to such high levels of activity with my usual low levels of sleep. Unlike any visitors before, I actually planned some distinct down days into the schedule – making my busiest work days free of any far away activities so I could spend most of the day doing whatever I need to. Where I usually spread out all my work to be done before brunch, I made sure to plan some breaks for myself as well. I had it down to an art. So after the first weekend adjustment, I sailed into a new routine like it was simply always there.

Just before our trip to Hamilton Island, things got really rather edgy – not with anyone at home, not with having visitors, not with any feelings towards space or routine, just… bad mojo. Things were happening with friends and work that really kept me up at night and made me drag my feet in the morning, but I felt like it was just a phase. I brushed it off as something we would all quickly get over. I thought that if I had learned anything from my own history, that I know my team at work will often take on my general tone and demeanor. So I blamed myself and figured maybe I was unknowingly doing too much and it was coming through. Maybe I was being short with people. So I took a break and gave everyone around me a break while I did some general tasks I needed to catch up on before vacation. Then I left for a long weekend that didn’t have too much of an effect on anyone because it was a long weekend in the States too. It all came out like I took only one day off of work and I’m sure hardly anyone noticed. So I didn’t stress about it while I was gone.

The unplanned continued to be planned perfectly. We came back on a Wednesday. I went to work on a Thursday while my dad went and did his own thing for the day. I was up for meetings at 6am and still at my desk at 7:30pm, and usually I wouldn’t be mad about it knowing that I was catching up. But to be honest I don’t even remember what; I don’t even remember how. I just know that my stress skyrocketed so far through the roof that I completely short circuited. I broke. Upset, hurt, annoyed, overwhelmed, sad, angry, disrespected, and finally completely complacent. I entered a realm of non-caring. I had to or I think this weekend would have killed me.

There’s not much I can say. I may be a blogger but I still have a great deal of privacy about the real-time workings of my life. What I can say is that it has been most of 6 or 7 years now since I felt this much anxiety in my chest and this much literal pain in making my heart beat. It has been all this time that I’ve been able to skate by thinking that my 30’s have finally rewarded me with a sense of adulthood and left high school far behind. But alas, people are people. People say and do whatever they need to be ok with themselves and that’s hardly ever ok for others. Not many people are self reflective or aware. Not many people have the patience or sense or quiet needed to understand themselves, so they hurt and blame others. Not many people know how to apologize or take responsibility. These are all things I know. And despite how increasingly hard these last few weeks became, day after day, it isn’t even the words that get to me. It’s the actions. It’s my expectations of behavior. I don’t much care what people say or do in regard to me, but I do expect people not to lie to me. Most of all, I expect people to get out of my way in a sense. I’m not sure how to describe it other than I’ve never done anything bad or wrong. All emotions aside, there’s proof in thousands of numbers about my knowledge and capability as a person. I can expect people that don’t even care to know me, to make their assumption. Everyone does. Human nature is never kind to change. But I shouldn’t have to prove myself and set my boundaries over and over again with the people I talk to almost every day; with people that I’ve spent more of my life with in the last few years than I’ve spent with any other aspect of my life. So naturally, things have to change. I’m calling for big changes. I don’t know what will happen, and I’m not entirely sure what my life will be like tomorrow. What I do know is that I’ll do whatever it takes to continue coming out on top.